Charterhouse History | Charterhouse Charterhouse History Home About Us Charterhouse History Charterhouse History Charterhouse is one of the great historic schools of England and among the most beautiful. Drawing deeply on the heritage of the past, within a framework of sensible discipline based on sound Christian values, the School strives to stimulate independent inquiry and intellectual curiosity, to match physical fitness with a love of the arts, and to foster a secure sense of individuality to be placed at the service of society. The founder, Thomas Sutton, held high public office and through shrewd investment became one of the wealthiest men in Jacobean England. In 1611, the year of his death, Sutton made provision for the establishment of a hospital for pensioners and a school for boys. Buildings near Smithfield in London which had once housed a Carthusian monastery, established in the fourteenth century, were purchased, and Sutton was buried in the chapel. Pupils have always been referred to as Carthusians. A few years later, the Headmaster, Robert Brooke, a royalist, was dismissed by Cromwell. The masters used to meet in his study and the Charterhouse common room is still known today as Brooke Hall.

Brooke's courageous independence of mind is a quality nurtured in their pupils by the present teaching staff who are known collectively as members of Brooke Hall. In response to the recommendations of the Public Schools Commission of 1864, and with the support of the Headmaster, William Haig Brown, the Governors eventually agreed to move the School from London. They purchased 68 and a half acres of the Deanery Farm Estate, just outside Godalming, having sold the School's original site to Merchant Taylors'. The School arrived in Godalming in June 1872, with 120 boys in three boarding houses: Saunderites (Headmaster's House), Verites and Gownboys. An increase in pupil numbers led to further houses being built at the expense of those masters whose names they now bear. By 1921, all eight additional houses had become the property of the Governing Body. Further purchases of land to the north and west increased the size of the School's grounds to around 250 acres.

The magnificent chapel, designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, was consecrated in 1927 as a memorial to nearly 700 Carthusians who died in the Great War. It is the largest war memorial in England. Some 350 names have been added to commemorate those who died in the Second World War and other conflicts of the twentieth century. Close to the chapel stands a bright red telephone box, another of Scott's distinctive designs. Recent additions to the campus include seven new Houses built in the 1970s, the Art Studio, the John Derry Technology Centre, the Ben Travers Theatre, the Ralph Vaughan Williams Music Centre, the Halford Hewitt Golf Course, the Queen's Sports Centre, the Sir Greville Spratt athletics track, Chetwynd (a hall of residence for girls), the Modern Languages Centre, The Hunt Health Centre and Fletcherites (a sixth form House). For a history of Charterhouse, see Charterhouse, a 400th Anniversary Portrait, ed Dr Ernst Zillekens (Third Milliennium Publications 2010).

Roll of Honour Please click the link below to view an online Roll of Honour to 695 Old Carthusians and teachers who perished in the First World War. History of the Old Carthusians History of the Old Carthusians Old Carthusians In the 18th century football was played by most of Britain's leading public schools. There is documentary evidence that football was played at Eton as early as 1747. Westminster started two years later. Harrow , Shrewsbury , Winchester and Charterhouse had all taken up football by the 1750s. The Football Association was established in October, 1863. The aim of the FA was to establish a single unifying code for football. The first meeting took place at the Freeman's Tavern in London. The clubs represented at the meeting included Barnes, Blackheath, Perceval House, Kensington School, the War Office, Crystal Palace, Forest (later known as the Wanderers ), the Crusaders and No Names of Kilburn. Charterhouse also sent an observer to the meeting. In 1871, Charles W. Alcock , the Secretary of the Football Association , announced the introduction of the Football Association Challenge Cup .

It was the first knockout competition of its type in the world. Four years later former pupils of Charterhouse School established the Old Carthusians Football Club. This including the English international, Charles Wreford Brown . They entered the FA Cup and won the competition in 1881 by beating Old Etonians 3-0 in the final. Old Carthusians also won the FA Amateur Cup in 1894 and 1897. The club still exists and currently play in the Arthurian League. CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: St. Bruno (1030-1101) Home > Catholic Encyclopedia > B > St. Bruno St. Bruno Help support New Advent and get the full contents of this website as an instant download . Includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers, Summa, Bible and more  all for only $19.99... Confessor , ecclesiastical writer, and founder of the Carthusian Order . He was born at Cologne about the year 1030; died 6 October, 1101.

He is usually represented with a death's head in his hands, a book and a cross, or crowned with seven stars; or with a roll bearing the device O Bonitas. His feast is kept on the 6th of October. According to tradition, St. Bruno belonged to the family of Hartenfaust, or Hardebüst, one of the principal families of the city, and it is in remembrance of this origin that different members of the family of Hartenfaust have received from the Carthusians either some special prayers for the dead , as in the case of Peter Bruno Hartenfaust in 1714, and Louis Alexander Hartenfaust, Baron of Laach, in 1740; or a personal affiliation with the order, as with Louis Bruno of Hardevüst, Baron of Laach and Burgomaster of the town of Bergues-S. Winnoc, in the Diocese of Cambrai , with whom the Hardevüst family in the male line became extinct on 22 March, 1784. We have little information about the childhood and youth of St. Bruno .

Born at Cologne , he would have studied at the city college, or collegial of St. Cunibert. While still quite young (a pueris) he went to complete his education at Reims , attracted by the reputation of the episcopal school and of its director, Heriman. There he finished his classical studies and perfected himself in the sacred sciences which at that time consisted principally of the study of Holy Scripture and of the Fathers . He became there, according to the testimony of his contemporaries, learned both in human and in Divine science . His education completed, St. Bruno returned to Cologne , where he was provided with a canonry at St. Cunibert's, and, according to the most probable opinion, was elevated to the priestly dignity. This was about the year 1055. In 1056 Bishop Gervais recalled him to Reims , to aid his former master Heriman in the direction of the school . The latter was already turning his attention towards a more perfect form of life, and when he at last left the world to enter the religious life , in 1057, St.

Bruno found himself head of the episcopal school , or écolâtre, a post difficult as it was elevated, for it then included the direction of the public schools and the oversight of all the educational establishments of the diocese . For about twenty years, from 1057 to 1075, he maintained the prestige which the school of Reims has attained under its former masters, Remi of Auxerre , Hucbald of St. Amand , Gerbert, and lastly Heriman. Of the excellence of his teaching we have a proof in the funereal titles composed in his honour , which celebrate his eloquence, his poetic, philosophical , and above all his exegetical and theological , talents; and also in the merits of his pupils, amongst whom were Eudes of Châtillon, afterwards Urban II , Rangier, Cardinal and Bishop of Reggio , Robert, Bishop of Langres , and a large number of prelates and abbots . In 1075 St. Bruno was appointed chancellor of the church of Reims , and had then to give himself especially to the administration of the diocese . Meanwhile the pious Bishop Gervais, friend of St.

Bruno , had been succeeded by Manasses de Gournai, who quickly became odious for his impiety and violence . The chancellor and two other canons were commissioned to bear to the papal legate , Hugh of Die, the complaints of the indignant clergy , and at the Council of Autun , 1077, they obtained the suspension of the unworthy prelate . The latter's reply was to raze the houses of his accusers, confiscate their goods, sell their benefices , and appeal to the pope . Bruno then absented himself from Reims for a while, and went probably to Rome to defend the justice of his cause. It was only in 1080 that a definite sentence, confirmed by a rising of the people, compelled Manasses to withdraw and take refuge with the Emperor Henry IV . Free then to choose another bishop , the clergy were on the point of uniting their vote upon the chancellor. He, however, had far different designs in view.

According to a tradition preserved in the Carthusian Order , Bruno was persuaded to abandon the world by the sight of a celebrated prodigy, popularized by the brush of Lesueur--the triple resurrection of the Parisian doctor, Raymond Diocres. To this tradition may be opposed the silence of contemporaries, and of the first biographers of the saint ; the silence of Bruno himself in his letter to Raoul le Vert, Provost of Reims ; and the impossibility of proving that he ever visited Paris . He had no need of such an extraordinary argument to cause him to leave the world. Some time before, when in conversation with two of his friends, Raoul and Fulcius, canons of Reims like himself, they had been so enkindled with the love of God and the desire of eternal goods that they had made a vow to abandon the world and to embrace the religious life . This vow , uttered in 1077, could not be put into execution until 1080, owing to various circumstances. The first idea of St. Bruno on leaving Reims seems to have been to place himself and his companions under the direction of an eminent solitary, St.

Robert, who had recently (1075) settled at Molesme in the Diocese of Langres , together with a band of other solitaries who were later on (1098) to form the Cistercian Order . But he soon found that this was not his vocation, and after a short sojourn at Sèche-Fontaine near Molesme, he left two of his companions, Peter and Lambert, and betook himself with six others to Hugh of Châteauneuf, Bishop of Grenoble , and, according to some authors, one of his pupils. The bishop , to whom God had shown these men in a dream, under the image of seven stars, conducted and installed them himself (1084) in a wild spot on the Alps of Dauphiné named Chartreuse, about four leagues from Grenoble , in the midst of precipitous rocks and mountains almost always covered with snow. With St. Bruno were Landuin, the two Stephens of Bourg and Die, canons of Sts.

Rufus, and Hugh the Chaplain, "all, the most learned men of their time", and two laymen , Andrew and Guérin, who afterwards became the first lay brothers . They built a little monastery where they lived in deep retreat and poverty, entirely occupied in prayer and study, and frequently honoured by the visits of St. Hugh who became like one of themselves. Their manner of life has been recorded by a contemporary, Guibert of Nogent, who visited them in their solitude. (De Vitâ suâ, I, ii.) Meanwhile, another pupil of St. Bruno , Eudes of Châtillon, had become pope under the name of Urban II (1088). Resolved to continue the work of reform commenced by Gregory VII , and being obliged to struggle against the antipope , Guibert of Ravenna , and the Emperor Henry IV , he sought to surround himself with devoted allies and called his ancient master ad Sedis Apostolicae servitium. Thus the solitary found himself obliged to leave the spot where he had spent more than six years in retreat, followed by a part of his community, who could not make up their minds to live separated from him (1090).

It is difficult to assign the place which he then occupied at the pontifical court, or his influence in contemporary events, which was entirely hidden and confidential. Lodged in the palace of the pope himself and admitted to his councils, and charged, moreover, with other collaborators, in preparing matters for the numerous councils of this period, we must give him some credit for their results. But he took care always to keep himself in the background, and although he seems to have assisted at the Council of Benevento (March, 1091), we find no evidence of his having been present at the Councils of Troja (March, 1093), of Piacenza (March, 1095), or of Clermont (November, 1095). His part in history is effaced. All that we can say with certainty is that he seconded with all his power the sovereign pontiff in his efforts for the reform of the clergy , efforts inaugurated at the Council of Melfi (1089) and continued at that of Benevento . A short time after the arrival of St.

Bruno , the pope had been obliged to abandon Rome before the victorious forces of the emperor and the antipope . He withdrew with all his court to the south of Italy . During the voyage, the former professor of Reims attracted the attention of the clergy of Reggio in further Calabria, which had just lost its archbishop Arnulph (1090), and their votes were given to him. The pope and the Norman prince, Roger, Duke of Apulia, strongly approved of the election and pressed St. Bruno to accept it. In a similar juncture at Reims he had escaped by flight; this time he again escaped by causing Rangier, one of his former pupils, to be elected, who was fortunately near by at the Benedictine Abbey of La Cava near Salerno . But he feared that such attempts would be renewed; moreover he was weary of the agitated life imposed upon him, and solitude ever invited him. He begged, therefore, and after much trouble obtained, the pope's permission to return again to his solitary life. His intention was to rejoin his brethren in Dauphiné, as a letter addressed to them makes clear.

But the will of Urban II kept him in Italy , near the papal court, to which he could be called at need. The place chosen for his new retreat by St. Bruno and some followers who had joined him was in the Diocese of Squillace , on the eastern slope of the great chain which crosses Calabria from north to south, and in a high valley three miles long and two in width, covered with forest. The new solitaries constructed a little chapel of planks for their pious reunions and, in the depths of the woods, cabins covered with mud for their habitations. A legend says that St. Bruno whilst at prayer was discovered by the hounds of Roger, Great Count of Sicily and Calabria and uncle of the Duke of Apulia, who was then hunting in the neighbourhood, and who thus learnt to know and venerate him; but the count had no need to wait for that occasion to know him, for it was probably upon his invitation that the new solitaries settled upon his domains. That same year (1091) he visited them, made them a grant of the lands they occupied, and a close friendship was formed between them. More than once St.

Bruno went to Mileto to take part in the joys and sorrows of the noble family , to visit the count when sick (1098 and 1101), and to baptize his son Roger (1097), the future King of Sicily . But more often it was Roger who went into the desert to visit his friends, and when, through his generosity, the monastery of St. Stephen was built, in 1095, near the hermitage of St. Mary, there was erected adjoining it a little country house at which he loved to pass the time left free from governing his State. Meanwhile the friends of St. Bruno died one after the other: Urban II in 1099; Landuin, the prior of the Grand Chartreuse, his first companion, in 1100; Count Roger in 1101. His own time was near at hand. Before his death he gathered for the last time his brethren round him and made in their presence a profession of the Catholic Faith , the words of which have been preserved.

He affirms with special emphasis his faith in the mystery of the Holy Trinity , and in the real presence of Our Saviour in the Holy Eucharist --a protestation against the two heresies which had troubled that century, the tritheism of Roscelin , and the impanation of Berengarius . After his death, the Carthusians of Calabria, following a frequent custom of the Middle Ages by which the Christian world was associated with the death of its saints , dispatched a rolliger, a servant of the convent laden with a long roll of parchment, hung round his neck, who passed through Italy , France , Germany , and England . He stopped at the principal churches and communities to announce the death, and in return, the churches, communities, or chapters inscribed upon his roll, in prose or verse, the expression of their regrets, with promises of prayers . Many of these rolls have been preserved, but few are so extensive or so full of praise as that about St. Bruno . A hundred and seventy-eight witnesses, of whom many had known the deceased, celebrated the extent of his knowledge and the fruitfulness of his instruction. Strangers to him were above all struck by his great knowledge and talents.

But his disciples praised his three chief virtues--his great spirit of prayer , an extreme mortification , and a filial devotion to the Blessed Virgin . Both the churches built by him in the desert were dedicated to the Blessed Virgin: Our Lady of Casalibus in Dauphiné, Our Lady Della Torre in Calabria; and, faithful to his inspirations, the Carthusian Statutes proclaim the Mother of God the first and chief patron of all the houses of the order, whoever may be their particular patron. St. Bruno was buried in the little cemetery of the hermitage of St. Mary, and many miracles were worked at his tomb . He had never been formally canonized . His cult, authorized for the Carthusian Order by Leo X in 1514, was extended to the whole church by Gregory XV , 17 February, 1623, as a semi-double feast, and elevated to the class of doubles by Clement X , 14 March, 1674. St. Bruno is the popular saint of Calabria; every year a great multitude resort to the Charterhouse of St.

Stephen, on the Monday and Tuesday of Pentecost, when his relics are borne in procession to the hermitage of St. Mary, where he lived, and the people visit the spots sanctified by his presence. An immense number of medals are struck in his honour and distributed to the crowd, and the little Carthusian habits, which so many children of the neighbourhood wear, are blessed. He is especially invoked, and successfully, for the deliverance of those possessed. As a writer and founder of an order, St. Bruno occupies an important place in the history of the eleventh century. He composed commentaries on the Psalms and on the Epistles of St. Paul , the former written probably during his professorship at Reims , the latter during his stay at the Grande Chartreuse if we may believe an old manuscript seen by Mabillon --"Explicit glosarius Brunonis heremitae super Epistolas B. Pauli." Two letters of his still remain, also his profession of faith , and a short elegy on contempt for the world which shows that he cultivated poetry.

The "Commentaries" disclose to us a man of learning; he knows a little Hebrew and Greek and uses it to explain, or if need be, rectify the Vulgate ; he is familiar with the Fathers, especially St. Augustine and St. Ambrose , his favourites. "His style", says Dom Rivet, "is concise, clear, nervous and simple, and his Latin as good as could be expected of that century: it would be difficult to find a composition of this kind at once more solid and more luminous, more concise and more clear". His writings have been published several times: at Paris , 1509-24; Cologne, 1611-40; Migne , Latin Patrology, CLII, CLIII, Montreuil-sur-Mer, 1891. The Paris edition of 1524 and those of Cologne include also some sermons and homilies which may be more justly attributed to St. Bruno , Bishop of Segni . The Preface of the Blessed Virgin has also been wrongly ascribed to him; it is long anterior, though he may have contributed to introduce it into the liturgy. St.

Bruno's distinction as the founder of an order was that he introduced into the religious life the mixed form, or union of the eremitical and cenobite modes of monasticism, a medium between the Camaldolese Rule and that of St. Benedict. He wrote no rule, but he left behind him two institutions which had little connection with each other--that of Dauphiné and that of Calabria. The foundation of Calabria, somewhat like the Camaldolese , comprised two classes of religious: hermits , who had the direction of the order, and cenobites who did not feel called to the solitary life; it only lasted a century, did not rise to more than five houses, and finally, in 1191, united with the Cistercian Order . The foundation of Grenoble , more like the rule of St. Benedict , comprised only one kind of religious, subject to a uniform discipline, and the greater part of whose life was spent in solitude, without, however, the complete exclusion of the conventual life. This life spread throughout Europe , numbered 250 monasteries , and in spite of many trials continues to this day.

The great figure of St. Bruno has been often sketched by artists and has inspired more than one masterpiece: in sculpture , for example, the famous statue by Houdon, at St. Mary of the Angels in Rome , "which would speak if his rule did not compel him to silence"; in painting , the fine picture by Zurbaran , in the Seville museum, representing Urban II and St. Bruno in conference; the Apparition of the Blessed Virgin to St. Bruno , by Guercino at Bologna; and above all the twenty-two pictures forming the gallery of St. Bruno in the museum of the Louvre, "a masterpiece of Le Sueur and of the French school ". Charterhouse, a Brief History [ Victorian Web Home —> Social History —> Education ] Charterhouse School designed by Philip Charles Hardwick (1822-1892), with later additions by Sir Arthur Blomfield , W.D. Caroe , Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, and others. 1872. Godalming, Surrey.

[Click on thumbnail for larger image.] Charterhouse School was founded in the seventeenth century by Thomas Sutton, a wealthy commoner who had made his money largely through the Durham coalfields. Having bought up the Earl of Suffolk's mansion in London, on the site of an old Carthusian priory, he had the building converted for use as an almshouse, school, and chapel. The school was originally intended for poor bright pupils, but was destined to become one of the great English public schools. In 1872 it moved down to Godalming in Surrey, under the direction of the then headmaster, William Haig Brown (1823-1907), who was in charge of the school from 1867 to 1897. The set of new buildings prepared for the school, built to the design of the distinguished architect Philip Charles Hardwick , "consist chiefly of one big open-ended quad facing SW.... the style a standard C19 commercial Gothic, but all the same a brilliant study in asymmetry, far above Hardwick's usual level." Particularly striking is "the way in which the end towers are quite different, but in perfect balance" (Nairn et al.

143-44). Local Bargate stone was used, and this has a warmth that adds greatly to the attraction of the complex. The result is "probably the most picturesque of the 19C public schools" (Nairn et al. 144). The hall, known simply as Hall , was added in 1884/5 by the architect Sir Arthur Blomfield , "one of the last great Gothic Revivalists" (Elliot) who had once been articled to Hardwick. Hall is adorned with a pinnacle spire, gargoyles , and heraldic shields . The latter, kept brightly painted, bear the family arms of the headmaster and some of the assistant masters of that period.

There are many other points of interest, such as the imposing central tower, which is not in fact a bell-tower but a water tower; the library part of Hall, with its original ventilation gables; the cloisters which hark back to the school's Carthusian connection; the Science Block (1882, 1907 and 1920) with its Old Carthusian clock, bells , and green-domed observatory; the Venetian well-head in the middle of Scholars' Court ; and the striking Memorial Chapel (1922-1927) with lancet windows, built to a design by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the largest war memorial in the country. Among the school's most famous pupils at the old site were Richard Crashaw, Richard Lovelace, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, John Wesley and William Makepeace Thackeray — who gradually softened in his stance towards the place and left a sentimental account of it as Grey Friars in The Newcomes. Roger Williams (1604-1683), the founder of Rhode Island, was also educated there.

Famous pupils at the Surrey site have included Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scout movement (Baden-Powell was one of the pupils who moved to Godalming with the school); Sir Max Beerbohm , the cartoonist; Ralph Vaughan Williams , the composer; and the writer Robert Graves. Note For further details, see Anthony Quick's Charterhouse: A History of the School (Charterhouse School, 1990) and visit the history section of the school's own website , which has a tour of the school. Sources Elliot, John, rev. "Blomfield, Sir Arthur William (1829-1899)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Web. 11 May 2012. Nairn, Ian, Nikolaus Pevsner, rev. Bridget Cherry. The Buildings of England: Surrey. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2nd ed. 1971. Porter, Stephen, and Harriet Richardson. The Charterhouse: A Guide. English Heritage, 2000. Available from the school bookshop. Useful for the school's history, but note that this is really a guide to the London site.

"A Walk Round Charterhouse." An informative leaflet accompanied by a map, available from the school. Archives | Charterhouse Charterhouse Charterhouse, Godalming, Surrey, GU7 2DX Switchboard: +44 (0)1483 291500 | reception@charterhouse.org.uk Accessibility Archives The Charterhouse Registers The ‘Charterhouse Registers’, which give biographical details of scholars (boys on the foundation) and of all known pupils from 1769 to 1975 have been published, and are now available online. The Carthusian magazine 1872-2012, School photographs 1868-1939, and scrapbooks of Charterhouse life 1863-1903, can also be viewed online. Click here to request a username and password for the digitised Archive . Digital Archive| Internal Page School Archive The Charterhouse School Archive (in Godalming) is located in the cloisters adjacent to Scholars’ Court and contains the records of the School's activities and administration since 1872.

Some registers and printed annual form lists for earlier years in the nineteenth century were transferred when the school moved from London, and a few papers, letters and albums relating to the period before the move have been given by former masters and pupils. Otherwise all earlier records of Thomas Sutton's 1611 foundation, including scholars, are held in the London Metropolitan Archive . The Charterhouse Archive contains the official records of the school, but also a wide range of information and photographs covering every aspect of Carthusian life, and collections relating to the lives of Old Carthusians as diverse as Thackeray, Baden Powell, Beerbohm, Vaughan Williams and Ronald Millar. The archive is available to the school community as an educational and administrative resource, and we also welcome research enquiries from the general public. For further information or to arrange a visit, please contact The Archivist, Catherine Smith, +44 (0) 1483 291604, archive@charterhouse.org.uk .

Charterhouse London Charterhouse In May 2005, an Ecumenical Service was held to commemorate the Dissolution of the Carthusian House of the Salutation of the Mother of God at Smithfield and St John Houghton, its Prior, and Companions on the 470th anniversary of their Martyrdom. Sutton's Hospital at Charterhouse now stands on the site of the monastery and incorporates some remains of the buildings constructed by Prior Houghton. The present Charterhouse long desired to set up a fitting memorial to honour the courage and fidelity of St John and his fellow monks, to acknowledge Catholic origins gratefully, to come to terms with the cruelties and divisions of the past and to look to the future, as an Anglican foundation, in a spirit of hope and reconciliation, to unity, charity and peace. The commemoration was the brainchild of Dr Richard Chartres, the Anglican Bishop of London.

The Commemorative Stone in the former Great Cloister of the House of the Salutation was commissioned by the Medical College of St Bartholomew's Hospital Trust, which now owns the space, formerly in the hands of the Merchant Taylors' School, Charterhouse School and, before them all, the peaceful followers of St Bruno. The College, both Schools, the Royal London School of Medicine and Dentistry (also housed on the site) and the members of the present day Sutton's Hospital, together with many ecumenical representatives, recalled how, just before the monks were arrested and the House taken by Henry VIII, they had solemnly asked each other's forgiveness and by the celebration of Mass become reconciled to each other, to Christ and to the path that would lead to their persecution and death. Mindful of the study, devotion and spirit of peace and reconciliation in the monks, the Stone established to maintain their honour in the 21st century reads, May the cause of healing inspire all who study and teach here today.

The ceremony, one of the most significant events so far to have taken place in the United Kingdom to make reparation for the sufferings and divisions of the past so as to build a true foundation for the reconciliation of the future, took the form of a procession to the recognisable areas of the old London Charterhouse. The congregation visited the still extant court of the Carthusian converse brothers (now the Wash House Court, also known to this day as 'The Monastery'), the site of the cells and gardens of the cloister monks, the one remaining (though rebuilt) side of the cloister, the cloister garth (in which stands the Commemorative Stone) where the Carthusian monks and brothers lie buried, the Chapel of Sutton's Hospital, housed in the old Chapter House (where the monks had resolved not to swear the Oath of Allegiance proclaiming Henry VIII 'Head of the Church'), for Vespers based on the rite of the Carthusian Order but in the style of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, and finally to the open air site of the monks' choir in their Priory Church, where they had reconciled themselves to each other before taking the road to martyrdom.

Where the Altar had once stood, and at which St John Houghton had celebrated the Mass of the Holy Spirit with his brethren on the eve of their torment for the sake of obedience to Christ, the present day Brothers placed a red rose for each of the martyrs on a representation of the Tyburn Tree, the gibbet on which St John and eight others were hanged prior to their judicial murder by being drawn and quartered. Here a Memorial set up in 1958 also marks the deaths of St John and his Companions for the sake of conscience. During the ceremony, as the congregation paused at the sites, the Master of Sutton's Hospital, James Thompson, and the Envoy of the Carthusian Order, Dr Keith Day, read extracts from Dom Maurice Chauncey's eye-witness account of the events leading to the suffering of the monks and brothers.

After Vespers, Dr Day read a Message from Dom Marcellin Theeuwes, Prior of the Grande Chartreuse, and Dom John Babeau, Prior of St Hugh's Charterhouse at Parkminster in Sussex, which recalled the spirit of trustful resignation, reconciliation and forgiveness, in which St John and his Companions had embraced death for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In the same spirit of seeking and offering forgiveness, on behalf of the Carthusian Order, Dr Day offered to the Bishop of London, the Master and the Preacher of Sutton's Hospital (the Revd Michael Stevens) the Kiss of Peace, as well as to Bishop George Stack, who was representing the Roman Catholic Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. Then both bishops made addresses. Bishop Stack recalled the present day martyrs whose statues feature on the west front of Westminster Abbey, remarking how their example and fortitude in the face of persecution for the cause of Christ make the Carthusian martyrs powerful symbols for the modern age, in which more people have been martyred for Christ than in all the preceding nineteen centuries put together.

Above all, therefore, St John Houghton and his Companions are no longer to be seen merely as Catholic martyrs, but part of the great cloud of witnesses who belong to the whole of the Church, to all Christians. Bishop Chartres invited contemporary Christians to recover what the sons of St Bruno had always recognised and, in the end, gone to their deaths for: that the mystery of God is boundless, and that the attempt to limit or define it reduces and narrows it to the exclusion of love and spirituality, in the name of over-bureaucracy, excessive law, divided territory, and the resulting strife and violence. So he recalled the Church not only to the peace and resignation before the mystery of God that Carthusians know as the only constant in a world of flux, but to the depth of their faith and trust, at a time when the world lacks the anchor it longs to put down into Wisdom. Both bishops together dedicated the Commemorative Stone in the Cloister Garth and conducted the Act of Commemoration at the site of the High Altar of the Priory Church.

St Thomas More, England's great Lord Chancellor and another martyr for the Unity of the Church, had served at Mass in the Charterhouse and remained closely associated with the community there. From his own cell in the Tower of London, he had observed the Carthusian Priors John Houghton, Robert Lawrence (of Beauvale) and Augustine Webster (of Axholme) go off on the morning of their martyrdoms at Tyburn like young men, full of gladness. Other great spiritual men in whom lived the spirit of the House of the Salutation of the Mother of God, were John Wesley, a truly great apostle to the ordinary working people of England in the eighteenth century, who had been a boy at the Charterhouse School, and Walter Frere, a founder of the famous Anglican Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield, its first Superior and subsequently Bishop of Truro. Another old Carthusian was Geoffrey Curtis, also a member of the Community of the Resurrection. Fr Curtis was the friend of Paul Couturier, the 'Apostle of the Unity of Christians' also known as the father of Spiritual Ecumenism.

Curtis it was who first proposed the Memorial to the Carthusian martyrs, the healing of an ancient wound, and the purification of both Anglican and Catholic memory, in the spirit of Christian reconciliation. Although in 1535 the Carthusian House of the Salutation of the Mother of God at Smithfield was so violently closed through the passion and death on a Tree of its prior and brethren, just under 400 years later that sacrifice was fruitful in the rebirth in the Church of England of a Community of the Resurrection, founded by a former pupil of the school that had been named after the Carthusian Order. And, in further signs of divine providence, it can be recalled that the author of moves to promote the renown of St John Houghton and his brothers in the first Charterhouse was also the promoter, friend and biographer of Paul Couturier, founder of the modern Week of Prayer for the Unity of Christians. Throughout his working life, the Abbé Couturier was a school teacher in the Institution des Chartreux, another great school built on the foundations of a dissolved Charterhouse, at Lyon.

But, perhaps in the greatest sign of God's desire to heal the Church and reveal its Unity, in the 1990s, almost exactly 460 years since the last Catholic priests were taken from their Charterhouse to their deaths, Sutton's Hospital as its venerable successor counted two new Brothers: Fr Martin Heal and Fr Augustine Hoey, priests of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Westminster. Follow these links for more details:

Question: Pupils of which school are known as Carthusians?
Answer: CHARTERHOUSE